“It is a shame. How can people permit it? Suppose, Mrs. Fletcher, a wrecker should steal your money that way?”
“I was thinking of that.”
I never saw Margaret more disturbed—out of all proportion, I thought, to the cause; for we had talked a hundred times about such things.
“Do you think all men who are what you call operating around are like that?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Probably most men who are engaged in what is generally called speculation are doing what seems to them a perfectly legitimate business. It is a common way of making a fortune.”
“You see, Margaret,” Morgan explained, “when people in trade buy anything, they expect to sell it for more than they gave for it.”
“It seems to me,” Margaret replied, more calmly, “that a great deal of what you men call business is just trying to get other people's money, and doesn't help anybody or produce anything.”
“Oh, that is keeping up the circulation, preventing stagnation.”
“And that is the use of brokers in grain and stocks?”
“Partly. They are commonly the agents that others use to keep themselves from stagnation.”